


An Exploration of Habitat

by aileenrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Environmentalism, Family Feels, Fluff, M/M, Mild Angst, protester!cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 08:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3047777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aileenrose/pseuds/aileenrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's afraid of heights, and Cas lives in a tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exploration of Habitat

Dean isn’t sure he likes California yet. He’s a Kansas boy, born and bred, but once Sam and Jess got pregnant he packed his life into the trunk of the Impala and drove west. Sure, it was sudden, but within a week he had an apartment only a few minutes’ drive away from their place, and with his old boss’s five cents he had a job a week after that.

                “Wow, Dean,” Sam had said, mouth twitching, the first time he saw Dean wearing his fluorescently orange safety vest. “That’s…a look.”

                “This look is keeping your roads drivable, asshole,” Dean had shot back.

                Now, as before, Dean works as a foreman, this time over a crew reconstructing I-5. It’s a lot of the same—operating the huge roller-compactors, ordering gravel and tar, supervising his men—but he likes how much there is to see here in California. Lunch breaks are his favorite, sitting on the grassy verge of the road with nothing but a sandwich and a sweating Coke, and the view steadily changes as the weeks go by. City skylines turn into rolling hills turn into rocky slopes, Mount Shasta in the distance. He can’t believe he reached the age of 29 and had never seen a mountain until this year.

                At his weekly Sunday night dinner with Sam and Jess, Sam’s whole face lights up when he hears where Dean’s roadway construction has taken him.

                “Shasta?” He repeats. “You checked out the protester yet?”

                “What protester?”

                “Ooh!” Jess says. “What’s his name again? Angel Wings—Angel Wings Novak, right?”

                “What the hell kind of name is that?”

                “Yeah, that’s it,” Sam says to Jess, talking over Dean. “You know, kind of like Julia ‘Butterfly’ Hill—”

                “Do I know her?”

                “Seriously, Dean? _Seriously_? You’ve never heard of—”

                “Okay, all right,” Jess says.

                “ _Anyways_ ,” Sam says, “My boss, Ellen, she’s representing the civil suit. It’s been dragging on for over two years now.”

                Dean helps himself to more lasagna. “What’s all this about, anyhow?”

                “Oh,” Sam says. “It’s really cool, actually. Somehow, a redwood tree is right in the middle of this pine forest somewhere near Mount Shasta. Massive tree, over two hundred feet. Pacific Power wanted to bulldoze the whole area, string up some power lines, but this Novak guy caught wind and scaled up the tree. They’ve tried everything to get him down, but he won’t cooperate, and that’s given Ellen time to pursue a civil suit about their unethical logging practices. It’s a stalemate until the case gets decided or he comes down, which probably isn’t anytime soon—”

                “Three years up there,” Jess supplies. “I saw pictures on the news a few months ago. It’s hard to see but I think he built himself some kind of platform, like a hundred feet up. Trying to wait it out up there until the tree and the land surrounding it get protected.”

                “So he’s some kind of hippie-dippie, tree-hugging type,” Dean summarizes. “Hard pass, no thank you.”

                “Oh, come on, Dean,” Sam says. “It’ll be fun. Nice little hike out there, have a picnic or something, and support a good cause.”

                “Nuh-uh.”

                “And I can tell Ellen that I went out there, kind of a show of support—”

                “Nope.”

                “And, you know, this is what you really moved out here for, right? Family time, me, you and Jess, and the little one?”

                Jess gets the hint and puts her hand on her barely-showing baby bump. In between that and Sam’s puppy dog eyes, Dean’s trapped and he knows it.

                “Fine,” he grouches, and cuts himself an extra large helping of pie to make up for not getting his way. “But we’re not staying very long, okay? I’ve got better things to see than a smelly hippie singing Kumbaya.”

**

                There’s not just one hippie. There’s at least fifteen of them, singing or making signs or rattling around jars for people to put change into to support their awareness group. The most impressive thing Dean sees is the huge feller buncher parked within feet of the base of the redwood, and the hippies have even tried to ruin _that_ by festooning it with flower chains.

                Sam’s true colors reveal themselves as he tilts back his head and (long hippie hair flying in the wind) points up through the branches of the tree. “Look!” He says, all breathy admiration. “Man, you can barely see the platform up there. I didn’t realize he’d be that _high_.”

                “He’s not the only one,” Dean mutters, casting an eye around at the people around them. Jess, the only one who hears him, puts a hard elbow into his side.

                The drive here had been lovely, Dean could admit that. All green foothills and blue skies, pulling over at overlooks to see views of the mountains, Sam in the passenger seat and Jess’s laughter in his ear.

                At the turn-off, Dean had been surprised by the acres upon acres of forestland that had already been cleared—and sure, it wasn’t exactly the prettiest sight, all stumps and razed grass. From there it was quite easy to see the rest of the forest, advancing up the valley, and this towering redwood in the midst of all the pines, standing right on the edge of the forest and all the cleared ground. It looked a little like a battlefield.

                Dean’s brought back to the present by a young blonde woman approaching his group, smiling welcomingly at them.

                “Hi there!” she says. “I’m so glad you came here to support us. I’m Hester, by the way.”

                “Uh, Sam,” his brother says, since Dean is trying to appear fascinated by the grass at his feet and not make eye contact. “If you don’t mind me asking, what are you all doing here?”

                “I guess we’re something of Novak’s followers,” she says. “When we heard about what he was doing, we wanted to do something to help! We try to get awareness out there of what he’s doing, and raise money from any visitors for a variety of things, like funding environmental activism, or even helping to buy supplies for him—oh, and if any TV crews come, we always have interviews with them, since Novak’s all the way up there and he can’t exactly hold a conversation.”

                Dean cranes his head back to try to look up the trunk of the tree, but maybe Sam’s few inches on him gave him a better view, because Dean doesn’t see anything, and he’s not gonna admit to that, either.

                “How many days has he been up there now?” Jess is asking next to him.

                “One thousand, one hundred and forty four,” Hester says, beaming. “You want to take a look? I can show you around.”

                Dean brings up the rear, still doggedly trying to avoid eye contact with any of the people gathered here. There are a few other visitors, like them, but by and large most of the people here are Novak’s _followers_ , the people who have outlasted the TV crews and the home audiences who briefly gave this stunt some attention years ago.

                “There’s Uri, he and Balth spend nights here, just to be safe—we had a few incidents, before, of  under the cover of dark, some PP supporters would use some less-than-legal tactics to try to force Novak down—”

                “PP?” Dean repeats, snickering.

                “Pacific Power,” Hester says brightly, and this time Dean gets an elbow each from Sam and Jess.

                “They obviously hired a lumber company to do all the slicing and dicing for them—mutually profitable—and the loggers set up camp over there,” Hester continues, pointing to a row of trailers barely seem through the trees. “Mostly, they’re just trying to be nuisances, leaving their cigarette butts everywhere. Anna’s in charge of converting them.”

                “Converting them?”

                “Oh, yeah, it’s part of our mission here. If some of the loggers can be talked to, and made to realize that they can get other jobs, but we _can’t_ just get thousands-years-old redwoods to spring out of the ground again anytime soon, that just slows down the process even more. We get more supporters, and PP has to spend more money looking into alternatives. If enough roadblocks spring up, we’re hoping they’ll give up sooner than later. Who knows how much longer the court case is gonna drag on.”

                Hester stops at the base of the tree, giving a dismissive look to the huge feller buncher sitting within feet of the trunk, its heavy, mechanical claw tilted forward in a menacing way. “That’s PP’s idea of an intimidation tactic—a few years ago, they might have tried to use it, too, whether Novak was in the tree or not, but they know better now, with the court case and the media coverage. It’s mostly just a symbolic action, for them.”

Turning to the redwood, she indicates a little basket dangling by a rope. “This is how we get all of his food and water, and any other necessities, up there. He’ll haul it up when he feels like it, and he also has his own basket up there if he wants to send us down notes or trash or anything like that. That’s really his sole source of communication with us, and it’s weird to think none of us have ever even really met the man we’ve been supporting all these years—you know, a wave here, a _good morning_ shouted down—but there’s not much else we can do. He can’t come down, and we’ve never needed to go up!”

                She turns back to them. “Anyways, I’ve been talking a lot. Is there anything else you wanted to see while you were here?”

                Sam launches into a monologue about how he’s the junior partner at Ellen Harvelle’s firm—Hester’s whole face lights up, hearing her name—and how he wanted to see the protest in action, blah blah—

                “What about you?” Hester’s asking Jess, and Dean turns away, still trying to see a glimpse of this Angel Wings Novak guy, but he can’t see anything except for maybe the edge of a wooden platform, where the rope is hanging from. Jess is saying something about wanting to donate some money—bleeding hearts, his brother and sister-in-law, he can’t say he didn’t see it coming—and Dean _really_ can’t believe he drove all the way out here just to look at a tall tree and talk to a blonde hippie.

                “Dean? _Dean_!” That’s Sam, trying to get his attention, and Dean swings around, working out a crick in his neck.

                “Huh?”

                “I was just wondering what brought you here,” Hester says. “Are you at all interested in environmental activism?”

                “Nope,” Dean says. “Honestly, I was just hoping to get a glimpse of the guy whose screws are so loose he’s spent the last three years in a tree, but I gotta tell you, I can’t see _shit_ up there. If _Angel Wings_ Novak is supposed to be the symbol for this protest, you know, he could use a little bit of PR. Honestly, it seems like all you hippies down here are the ones really running the show,” Hester’s staring at him, and Dean shakes his head in an apology. “I meant hippie in a nice way,” he says. “You know, like, reclaim that term, right? Make it your _own_.”

                “My brother only means—” Sam says, after an uncertain pause, and then there’s a loud _clunk_ as a bucket comes sailing down from the tree, hitting the trunk only a few feet from Dean’s head, bouncing on the end of the rope before settling down.

                “Oh,” Hester says, hurrying forward, and a small crowd gathers around them, pressing Sam and Dean and Jess closer, as Hester reaches forward and pulls a scribbled note out of the bucket.

                Hester reads it, eyebrows furrowed, and then reads it again. “But _no one’s_ ever gone up there with him before,” she says. She looks up, and—to Dean’s surprise—looks right at him. “Novak asked if you would like to come see him,” she says.

                There’s a long pause.

                “Up there?” Dean says, gesturing up the tree in disbelief. “ _Me_? How—”

                And then, in a jangle, something else comes plummeting down the side of the tree. Sam starts laughing, that asshole—it’s a harness.

**

                It doesn’t matter how much Dean says he’s afraid of heights, that he’s really okay, _thanks though_ , or that the honor of monkey-scaling a two-hundred-foot monstrosity of a tree—because really, it hadn’t seemed _that_ big until he was expected to go up it—that honor should go to someone like Hester, or Uri, even Ellen Friggin’ Harvelle, but definitely not Dean Winchester. Nope. Definitely not him.

                “No, no, it’s what he wants,” Hester kept saying, distracted, while others in the group side-eye Dean and watch in silence while he is all but strong-armed into the harness. Hester presses a camera into his hand.

                “Can you take some pictures while you’re up there, please? His living situation, the view, whatever you can think of. We might get some more airtime with something new, like if everyone knows what Novak’s everyday conditions are like.”

                Dean grips the camera in his sweaty palm. “S-sure,” he says. He sounds dazed, out of it—he’s still not completely sure when he even agreed to this—and Sam and Jess are laughing like teenagers and taking pictures on their cell phones from a few feet away.

                Hester reaches over Dean’s head and gives the slack of the rope a hard yank, some kind of message to this Novak guy that Dean’s planning on strangling as long as he doesn’t plummet to his death first.

                “You’ll be fine, Dean,” she says, and steps back. Behind her, Sam’s snorting into his hand while filming, and Dean has a split second to give his youngest brother a murderous glare before he feels a tension run through his harness, his toes leaving the ground for a moment as the man somewhere above starts hauling up on the rope.

                Dean tucks the camera into the pocket of his button-up and, with a grunt, pulls himself up a few feet by grasping a knob on the tree. Hand over hand, reaching for hand and footholds, and he’s feeling pretty accomplished until he looks down and sees he’s only about nine or ten feet off the ground.

                “Try to _extend_ your _body_ ,” shouts Sam, whose been rock-climbing at the Y approximately twice in the seven years he’s lived in California—Dean, gritting his teeth and wishing he didn’t have an audience, reaches up for another handhold.

                “There’s the ticket,” he says to himself. “Nice and easy. Nothing to it. Nowhere to go but up.”

                The blood’s roaring so hard in his ears that he can hardly hear anything else; the noise of the crowd below falls back into a murmur. Novak is up there steadily pulling him up, so that Dean rises with small bursts, and Dean’s doing all he can to help out, since hauling 175 pounds of flailing man probably isn’t the easiest, and Dean would rather  not have this dude wear himself out with Dean still dangling in the wind.

                Up close, the bark is a pretty reddish-golden color and—Dean’s refusing to look down—he knows he’s close to the top when limbs start branching out on either side of him—knobby branches covered in lichen and leaves, a startled bird or two—even, surprisingly, bushes covered in berries, trailing down the trunk of the tree, mushrooms growing at angles from the moss—

                He almost thunks his head on the bottom of the platform. He can hear fast breaths above him, and the harness rope goes slack a little, dropping him a few inches, before it catches.

                The platform above Dean seems to be six or seven planks trussed side by side, their ends resting on limbs thick as car tires. Dean hesitantly pushes his feet off the trunk of the tree and, swinging out into space, hooks his hands over the ends of the platform. Breath whistles through his teeth as he pulls himself up, muscles quivering, and he suddenly feels a warm hand close over his shoulder.

                “I’ve got you,” a hoarse voice says, close to his ear, and then there’s a hand hooked under each armpit—Dean gets a glimpse of the pinprick faces far down below, turned up towards him, and suddenly all his muscles turn into jelly. The man drags him the rest of the way over the edge of the platform himself, since Dean has all the finesse of a beached whale about then.

                “Jesus,” Dean says, gawping up at the canopy of leaves over him. His heart seems to be pounding all over his body. “Jesus Christ. Jesuschrist. Jesusholyfuckingchrist.”

                “Are you all right?” Low, rough voice, a body kneeling on the periphery of Dean’s vision, all while Dean lays there like a starfish caught in a net. Dean lets out a long breath and rubs at his eyes.

                “I’m afraid of heights, you dickbag. Why’d you ask me up here in the first place?”

                There’s a short silence, and then the man starts pulling on the straps of Dean’s harness, helping him to pull it off, and Dean sits up and wriggles out of it.

                The man kneeling next to Dean looks to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, but it’s hard to tell from the dark tangle of beard currently taking up half his face. He has a stunning pair of blue eyes between the beard and tousle of hair he’s sporting, with soft lines fanning from the edges of his eyes. Other than that, he’s wearing knee-sprung jeans, a long-sleeved tee-shirt. He’s a little on the thin side; Dean can see the dip of his clavicle when he rolls his shoulders.

                “So you’re Angel Wings Novak, huh?” Dean asks.

                The man’s eyes dart away. “Call me Cas, please,” he says.

                “All right, Cas,” Dean says. “I’ve got a lot to say to you, man. Just wait until I get all my thoughts in order.”

                “Okay,” Cas says, unconcerned. “Would you like something to eat?”

                Dean watches as the man gracefully unfolds himself and stands up, moving with sure, practiced steps across the platform. Closest to Dean, there are two ropes dangling off the edge, undoubtedly leading to the buckets that this Cas guy pulls up and tosses down at his choosing. There’s a stack of crates where Dean can see boxes and cartons with food labels within, also jugs of water, a tidy pile of books, and a rolled-up sleeping bag. Dean cranes his neck and sees another, smaller platform, halfway around the curve of the tree—a first aid kit, a flashlight, packs upon packs of those reusable heating pads that he and Sam used to shove into their gloves and the toes of their boots before going out to shovel the drive during cold Kansas winters. Overall, Dean could walk the end of one platform to the next in twelve steps or less,  but it’s a little easy to ignore how small the space is when there’s _that_ view, the one that stretches on for miles and miles of forest and mountain and crisp blue sky.

                The platform creaks as Cas comes next to Dean again, making him jump at the sudden sound.

                “Don’t worry,” Cas says, and there’s an almost-endearing kind crinkle to the edges of his eyes as he smiles and says, “I built this platform myself; one board sent up at a time. It’ll hold.”

                “Yeah, yeah,” Dean says, and looks to see what Cas brought him. There’s a pitcher half-filled with water and also a smooth wooden bowl, filled with berries.

                “Huckleberries,” Cas says, taking a few for himself. “They grow wild in the canopy here.”

                Dean reaches for the pitcher first and takes two big gulps of water before setting it aside and wiping his chin off. “Thanks.”

                Cas nods at him and settles down besides him, hanging his feet off the edge of the platform. He seems to be waiting, but Dean isn’t sure where to start.

                Why me?” Dean says. “Why the hell did you send down a note asking for _me_ to come up here? I don’t know if you know this, man, but you look like a cult leader, what with the beard and all, and those hippies down there sure treat you like one. I’m sure one of them would fucking _love_ the opportunity to meet you.”

                Cas nods. At Dean’s mention of his beard, his hand had gone up to it, almost unconsciously, like he hadn’t even realized he had one until it had been pointed out. He scratches at his cheek and says, “Well, I guess you should know that sound, uh, carries here. I heard you all down there—the man with you, saying your name, and you saying you wished you could have met me.”

                “Uh huh.”

                “And, well, something about your, um, _tone,_ seemed to suggest that you weren’t looking to be impressed by whatever you might see.”

                “Not following,” Dean says, helping himself to some of the berries.

                Cas sighs and drops his hand from his cheek. “You’re not the only one who’s noticed, Dean, the dedication of all  the wonderful people at the bottom of this tree right now, and every day. You’ve seen them—advocating for environmental awareness, raising money, going toe to toe with PP threats. They even gave me that nickname—Angel Wings—like I’m some kind of heavenly guardian up here. They must think so much of me, if they’re willing to go to such lengths.”

                He falls silent.

                “And?” Dean prompts.

                “And I know I fall far short of their expectations,” Cas says glumly. “They shouldn’t want to meet me, not really. I’m just some guy with his screws loose, living in a tree.”

                Dean isn’t sure what to say to that. Finally, he says, “You think it’s better to just put it off indefinitely? It could be another few _years,_ man.”

                Cas brightens. “Yes, who knows how long. Good point.”

                Dean decides that he’s just met this guy, and there’s no point in lecturing. He just shakes his head and changes the subject. “So, on a lark, you invite _me_ up instead,” Dean summarizes. “How, exactly, were you planning on this going?”

                Cas gives a loose shrug. “I can’t say I put much thought into it. No social contact for three years, you know and—well, I was never very good at it in the first place. But we could, uh, talk?”

                “Talk,” Dean says. “Yeah, that I can do. What do you do for fun up here?”

                There’s surprisingly more to do than Dean thought. Cas’s supporters borrow books from the local library and send them up to him; he also does sketches of the tree and its wildlife and tries to journal his days. He indicates an empty space on the platform where he’s practicing yoga daily, he says, to stay fit. (Dean tries not to look like he’s imagining Cas’s wiry body contorted into a bunch of fascinatingly flexible shapes.)

                “I’d be going out of my mind after three days,” Dean says.

                “It is very solitary,” Cas says, looking down to where his feet are kicked over the edge.

                “What about your family, friends? Do they ever come visit?” Dean imagines a quarrelsome set of parents, shouting up at Cas from the base of the tree—news about a distant family member, a reminder to brush his teeth daily.

                Another loose shrug from Cas. “There’s a reason why the people down there had to make up a name for me.”

                At Dean’s blank look, Cas says, “I never told anyone my name, not my first name, anyhow. None of my family knows that _Cas_ Novak’s the one living in a redwood tree in California.”

                “Dude, hate to break it to you, but they might piece it together after not seeing you for three years.”

                “They haven’t seen me for  much longer than that,” Cas says, his voice soft, and Dean can see that topic is effectively done.

                Dean opens his mouth—to say what, he hasn’t figured out yet—but Cas half-turns towards him. “I lead a pretty boring life up here. Tell me what’s happening out there in the world. I hardly get any news anymore.”

                Dean can’t resist the eager look in his eyes. He combs his brain for every news story that he can remember from the past few years—the royal wedding, the Red Sox winning the World Series, the New York student who got into every Ivy League school—

                “—and this dance, called _Gangnam Style_ , it became this huge thing, it’s hard to explain—oh, but there was also this one called the Harlem Shake, you’d need to hear the song to get it though—”

                Dean’s disjointed commentary of movies and world events and Super Bowl champions and Miley Cyrus (“who saw that one coming, huh?”) is listened to with unwavering attention by Cas, who eyes don’t even leave Dean’s face. Before he even realizes it, his news is becoming peppered with trivia from his own life—how he’d seen Bon Jovi at a concert in Topeka, or streaming the entire season of House of Cards in one night with Jess (Sam falling asleep on the arm of the couch before the first episode was over, annoyed when he woke up in the midst of episode four and neither Jess nor Dean would disengage from the screen long enough to catch him up)—

                Dean’s interrupted by a faint shout from far below, and Cas leans over without (in Dean’s eyes) any regard for the concept of gravity, squinting down.

                “I think that’s your brother,” he says. “I didn’t even notice the sun was going down.”

                Dean hadn’t noticed, either. He must have been up here for almost two hours, and not even realized it.

                “Oh,” he says after a moment. “They’ve been waiting this whole time—they drove up with me—shit, I better go down, shouldn’t I?”

                He stands up quickly, feeling as he does the weight of the camera Hester gave him bounce against his chest.

                “ _Shit,_ I was also supposed to take some pictures for your friend Hester down there. Okay, no worries. I’ll snap off a few right now.”

                They’re probably not the greatest pictures ever taken, but it’s not like Hester’s in a position to get any better. Dean, hurrying to catch the failing light, takes a few of the view from the platform, more of the platform itself—the neat stack of books, the curled sleeping bag against the redwood—

                Cas somehow expertly avoids being captured on the camera, even though the platform doesn’t give much room for hiding.

                “Oh, come on, man,” Dean says.

                “I’d really rather not,” Cas says. “I don’t really look like much right n—please, don’t.”

                Dean lowers the camera, looking at Cas’s thin body, his wild hair, his neat but well-worn clothes.

                “You look good,” he says. It’s just an honest opinion, not even a Winchester attempt at real flirting,  but Cas ducks his head, flushing.

                Dean’s eventually able to coax him to take a picture, even if it’s one from the side—Cas, leaning against the redwood, palming huckleberries into his mouth. It’s a bit blurry and his features are indistinct, which Dean thinks Cas probably appreciates.

                Then there’s nothing else to do but let Cas help him back into the harness. Cas’s long-fingered, sure hands move quickly over his body, tightening, securing. Dean’s suddenly far more aware of the way the straps between his legs push his junk forward, and he’s both mortified and half-hoping he’ll catch Cas checking him out.         

                “Thanks,” Dean says. “For, uh, inviting me up here. It was pretty cool.”

                Cas gives him a small smile, putting his hand to Dean’s shoulder. “It was so nice to have someone to talk to, if only for a little while. It’s been an honor to meet you, Dean.”

                Fuck, why’s he gotta be so intense about everything? Dean nods and looks away and then they both look down together at Dean’s shoulder, where Cas’s hand has been lingering for a few seconds too long.

                “Sorry,” Cas mumbles. “Social norms—I forgot.”

                “It’s nothing,” Dean mumbles back, and they awkwardly dance around each other so that Dean can sit on the edge of the platform. The sun has gone down, now, so that the ground is now shadowed, fathomless. Dean swallows loudly.

                “Don’t worry, Dean,” Cas says, positioning himself at the other end of the rope as Dean lowers himself over the edge. “I’ve got you.”

**

                For the next week Jess and Sam tease him mercilessly, equating every moment where Dean is slightly distracted, or daydreaming, to a moment where he’s really mooning over Angel Wings Novak. Sam especially likes to pretend to be Jane from _Tarzan,_ clutching dramatically at Jess and saying things in a bad British accent, like “I’ve _never_ met a man quite like him.”

                “Oh, come on!” Dean yelled at them last time. “I’m not swooning _that_ much!”

                It gets old pretty fucking fast but—well, it’s not like they’re completely wrong. A week ago, Dean never would have thought he’d be climbing a tree, period, let alone a thousand-year-old redwood with someone like Cas waiting for him at the top. When he’d made it down the tree that night, it had been a bit overwhelming—Hester, grabbing for her camera, asking what it was like up there while seven other voices chimed in with questions at the same time. Dean doesn’t even know what he garbled out between there and his retreat to the car. The whole drive home, Jess and Sam peppered him with bemused, easy softballs of questions. What did he have up there on his platform? What did they talk about? What was he like?

                The best answer Dean could come up with for that question was, like nothing anyone expected him to be.

                Something that Sam and Jess don’t know is that Dean’s been back already. His construction crew is still doing work out on I-5 which means he’s still quite close to the site where PP and Cas Novak have reached a stalemate. During a lunch break on Wednesday, Dean had gone to visit, feeling antsy and a bit embarrassed that everyone seemed to remember him. He had tried to call up to the platform but there hadn’t been an answer, and—before he felt completely crushed—Hester had told him that Cas sometimes spent whole days foraging the ecosystem of the redwood canopy, sending down detailed notes from time to time of the animals he saw, or samples of the plants, which the biologists at the local university went absolutely nuts over. That made Dean feel _marginally_ better—the idea of Cas scampering around without a harness was still a little stomach-churning, but Hester told him he could he leave a note for Cas that they’d put in with the food bucket they were sending up.

                So Dean, at a loss, had written out something stupid on a scrap of paper— _Came by to visit you. Dean_ —and left it behind like some old-timey British calling card, which did little to dispel Sam and Jess’s Tarzan and Jane comparisons. He’d been lucky when a tour bus had rolled into the field—a group of interested tourists from West Virginia, hearts and souls that desperately needed Hester’s lectures on environmental activism—because she had looked like she had wanted to talk to him again about his visit with Cas.

                So, on Friday evening, Dean’s off work and he starts in surprise, guiltily, when his phone starts trilling loudly from the passenger seat. _Sam_.

                “Hey,” Sam’s saying, as soon as he answers the call. “There’s a cookout at the Jones’ tonight—you know, our neighbors down the way? Lots of free food, booze, thought you might want to come.”

                “Uh,” Dean says, because the Mount Shasta peak is already looming through his windshield.

                “What, got something else to do?”

                “Well,” Dean says, trying to be nonchalant. “Kind of spontaneous, but I was thinking I might go see, uh, Novak again…” He trails off.

                Sam, on the other end, lets out a delighted laugh. “ _Seriously_? Dude, what happened when you were up on that platform? Did he hypnotize you? Seduce you? You are _hooked_.”

                “No I’m not,” Dean says. “Shut up.”

                “Yeah, okay,” Sam says. His voice gets a little muffled, farther away, as he says, “Hey, Jess! _Jess!_ Get this, Jane’s gonna go meet up with Tarzan tonight—”

                “If anyone here is Tarzan—” Dean sputters, “You—You’re Tarzan!”

                Sam just continues to laugh. “Yeah, yeah.  Me Tarzan. You Jane. Sounds like you’ve got it down.”

                Dean fumbles with the phone’s off button before throwing it back on the passenger seat, the tips of his ears burning.

                It’s not like it’s that big of a deal. If he’d met Cas on solid ground, at a bar or a run-in at a store, he’d say two hours of talk would be enough to guarantee some kind of friendship. He can’t exactly exchange numbers, or invite him out for a drink, but he can just drop by and—

                Well, it’s kind of hard to _just drop by_ on a guy living a stationary life one hundred feet up a tree, out in a forest, half a mile from the highway, without a little forethought, not that Dean is willing to admit to it.

                Hester smiles when she sees him, and then to Dean’s chagrin she hands him a folded-up piece of paper from her pocket, like she was expecting another visit from him all along.

                “Why don’t you just go up there and ask him yourself?” Dean says, a little rudely, looking over the list of questions she’s written up for him.

                Hester, in return, is a little offended. “Going up there without Novak asking me is like walking into someone’s home without an invitation,” she says. “He’s lived up there for three years, and after all he’s given up he deserves a little privacy, too.”

                “Fine, fine,” Dean says, folding up the list and sticking it in his back pocket. Because if, out of everyone in the world, Cas had chosen _Dean_ to be the one person to come and visit him—well, Dean wouldn’t lord it over anyone. He’s willing enough to help out.

                Dean walks up to the base of the redwood, and—clearing his throat and glancing around—he calls, “Hey, Angel Wings! Give someone a lift, would ya?”

                And he can’t keep back the smile when, scarcely a few seconds later, the harness comes sailing down the tree.

**

                Cas is a little breathless, beaming, when he grips Dean’s hand and helps to haul him over the edge of the platform. Just like before, Dean has to take a minute or two to recover—he had forgotten how high it was, how the wind was enough to sway him side to side, how far _down_ the ground was—and then he passes a hand over his face and sits up.

                “Miss me?”

                “Of course,” Cas says, nothing but honest, sitting close enough that his knee is grazing Dean’s.

                Dean then has to cough in his hand and look away for a moment—taking in the pallet of non-perishable food, the view—before turning back.

                “So,” he says. “What have you been up to?”

                “Up to?” Cas repeats. He seems to be smiling, still, Dean can see it in the kind crinkle of his eyes. “Nothing much today. I’ve been reading.”

                “Reading, huh? Anything else?”

                Cas opens his mouth, giving Dean a long, significant look, like Dean is the answer to that question. Finally, he shrugs. “What have you been up to?” He says, instead.

                So Dean tells him about his job, his crew, how Sam and Jess have been teasing him mercilessly since the first time he came up here.

                “What’s there to tease?” Cas asks, sounding a little anxious, and Dean nudges him with his shoulder.

                “They think you’ve either hypnotized me or seduced me. They can’t explain why a guy who refuses to ride a kiddie rollercoaster would voluntarily scale a redwood tree.”

                “Oh,” Cas says, and Dean takes pity on him—seeing that he’s flushed everywhere that isn’t beard or hair—and takes out Hester’s crumpled list of questions.

                “Hey, Hester sent me up with this. Can I ask you a few, before I forget?”

                “Um, okay,” Cas says, and Dean scans through the list and tries to find some that wouldn’t violate Cas’s strange code of privacy—no one, other than him, even knows Cas’s first name—and that he’s interested in knowing, himself.

                Cas, meanwhile, had gotten up to bring Dean some small nub of a pencil, the one he used to journal with, and settled close again next to Dean, cross-legged.

                “Ah, okay,” Dean says. “Here’s a good one. What did you do before this? You can be non-specific about employer or place, if you want.”

                Cas fidgets with the sleeves of his long-sleeved thermal. “I was an accountant,” he says finally, and he and Dean exchange a brief look—Dean incredulous, Cas challenging— before Dean dips his head and scrawls down the answer.

                “Was not expecting that,” Dean says. He looks up from the list. “How, then, does an accountant decide to do _this_?” He gestures around.

                “It was a lot of office work, indoors,” Cas says mildly. “I liked to go for hikes in my spare time. I started going off the beaten path, so to speak, exploring the wild.  Hiking led to camping, to kayaking, to tree-climbing. I thought I was the only one who knew about this place, this redwood. It seemed…sacred, you know? A redwood, all on its own out here, hidden in a pine forest. And then I came one day and found a crowd of men, cutting down trees, rooting up stumps—I didn’t have a plan, then. I just knew I had to stop them, somehow.”

                He pauses, looking around thoughtfully at his platform. “I didn’t think it would last as long as it has. But then Pacific Power tried to _force_ me down, threatened to chop down the tree whether I was in it or not, and I got stubborn. And somewhere in all of that, Hester and Uri and others heard about it, and started showing up to help protect the redwood. They found a way to rig a system to send food and boards and a sleeping bag up my way. Eventually they were able to organize, and file a court case. Ever since then, it’s been like some kind of war, like I’m a soldier on the front lines.  And, well,” he says, looking down at himself in a bewildered way. “I never thought I’d be considered the leader of some movement because of this. I’m just _Cas_.”

                “But you felt like you had to do it,” Dean says. “This tree is really something special to you, huh?”

                Cas looks like he’s choosing his words carefully. “It’s not like I don’t care about endangered ecosystems, or environmental activism—I do care, I really do. But that’s not what made me do all this. Some places…they might not mean anything to anyone else in the world, but they hold significance for you, you know? They make a home in your heart.”

                And Dean’s not even looking at the list anymore, he’s looking at Cas, with his frayed cargo pants, his bony ankles, the way he holds Dean’s eye, unblinking, like he’s trying to convince Dean of something—does he not know he already has Dean, hook, line and sinker?

                “So what makes this home?” Dean asks. His voice is low, matching Cas’s in intensity. “What do you see when you look around?”

                Cas pauses, and then, to Dean’s surprise, he puts his palm on Dean’s shoulder and pushes him. Dean gets the hints and lies on his back, feeling Cas lay down next to him.

                Cas’s hand gestures above them, to the wild, vibrant canopy of leaves arching over them. From this perspective, there’s nothing else, not even a hint of sky or mountain or pine, just leaves hissing and rubbing against each other, fluttering in the wind, casting dappled, shifting shadows over their face, so that the world is narrowed down to that, Dean and Cas, their heads close together, and overhead—

                “Green,” Cas says, in a fond voice. “That’s home, for me. I can’t imagine looking up and not seeing green.”

**

                Dean’s over at Sam and Jess’s, another family dinner, and while the two lovebirds talk about the upcoming baby shower over after-dinner drinks, Dean’s taking the opportunity to use their home computer.

                Hester had _said_ , after all, that she was going to try to get his pictures and his interview with Cas to the local news station, and if he’s not going to have a chance to see Cas in the flesh tonight, it’ll be the next closest thing.

                _Angel Wings Novak_ he types out, and there’s  a result from within the last twelve hours.

                Hester was good to her, he finds, as he skims through the article. Two of his pictures are included, plus a salvageable quote or two he’d gotten from Cas, but he’s more interested in the back story he’s given as he moves further down the page. How PP had tried to fell trees surrounding Cas’s redwood, hoping that a falling tree could jar Cas loose, scare him away. How PP and the lumberers had shut down the whole area for 13 days, so that none of Cas’s supporters could get close enough to bring him food or water, or comforts of any kind. He’d never heard of this—Cas had never mentioned it.  It seems a whole lot less funny, and a whole bunch more terrifying, even if—by Hester’s account—all the fighting is taking place in the court room now. Even though these events must have happened years ago, he’s struck by the fact that they happened, that Cas had been cold or scared or hungry, had been alone—and Dean hadn’t been there. Dean hadn’t even known he’d existed, yet.

                It’s such a strange thought, but a powerful one, and Dean’s hand falls off the mouse just thinking about it, how Cas had lived in a tree for over one thousand days, and Dean had only even known of him for fifteen of those days, has maybe spent about four or five of those countless hours with him.

                Dean begs off a little early, and then drives to his apartment and packs a duffel. He’s able to unearth a sleeping bag from the back of his closet, too. And then he makes the drive out to the bend in the highway near Mount Shasta, almost an hour way, and then the rutted turn-off, past the razed fields, until the redwood is in sight.

                There are only two people there, their shadows revealed by the light of a campfire.

                “Uri,” says the man closest to Dean, holding out a hand for him to shake. “We’ve heard all about you, Dean. Seems Novak likes you.”

                Dean’s glad for the darkness, because Uri’s matter-of-fact delivery of that sentence nonetheless can’t stop his soppy smile.

                “Hey,” he says, and nods across the fire to the other man, Balth. “Everything, uh, good down here?”

                “We keep it good,” Uri says, still in that matter-of-fact voice, and Dean is glad that Cas has people down here, looking out for him.

                Dean salutes them and then walks to the base of the tree, knowing Cas isn’t expecting him, and shouts up,

                “Hey, Novak!” And when that doesn’t get an answer, he tries, “Hey, Rapunzel!”

                There’s a faint noise from far up, and then Cas—his voice rough-sounding, like he’d been woken up—calls back, “Dean?”

                “Yeah. Let down your harness?”

                There’s a telltale jangling somewhere far above, and then the harness comes dropping down. Balth chuckles languidly from the fire as he watches Dean strap himself in, but Dean doesn’t pay him any attention. He’s never gone up the tree after dark—he can’t say he’s looking forward to it—but he _is_ looking forward to who he’ll find up top.

                He’s about fifty feet into his ascent when Cas calls down, like they’re continuing a conversation, “And if anyone would be Rapunzel here, it would be _you_.”

                “Why am I always the girl in these analogies,” Dean grumbles.

                And then he’s at the top, and Cas has him under the armpits, stumbling back onto the platform with an armful of Dean, and he’s gasping in surprise at the duffel strapped across Dean’s back, the sleeping bag cinched tight beneath it.

                “I didn’t expect you to come today, especially this late,” he says. “Are you spending the night?”

                “Yeah, if you’re cool with it,” Dean says back, and Cas’s hand squeezes him tight around his bicep.

                “Of course,” Cas says, his voice still marveling, and it makes Dean giddy.

                His eyes are still adjusting, but it’s a bit daunting, not to be able to see anything more than shadows, slight movements in the dark, especially after the harness comes slithering off. Cas takes his hand and leads him to the part of the platform that’s closest to the trunk of the tree, and they unroll Dean’s sleeping bag together.

                “I’ll set mine up right here,” Cas says, hand rasping over the platform on the other side of Dean’s sleeping bag. “Would that make you feel better, to have me between you and the edge?”

                “Tons better,” Dean says happily, and he hears Cas step nimbly away, for his own sleeping bag, and he returns with sure footsteps a few seconds later. Dean can hear him spreading the material out with practiced motions, and then settling himself on top of it.

                Dean, suddenly feeling shy, doesn’t say anything, just sits on top of his sleeping bag too. After a few minutes of silence, Cas offers, “I think I was only asleep for a few minutes.  I had been looking out at the view, I can see the highway from here…to think one of those headlights I saw was you, coming here.”

                “Yeah,” Dean says. And then, after another moment of silence, he starts telling Cas about the drive—the silent stretches of highway, the sky lit with stars, the rush of wind through his windows. He can’t say it very eloquently but Cas finds his fingers and squeezes them for a moment, his own palm surprisingly warm.

                “You love it, I can tell,” he says simply, like he gets it.

                Dean thinks his eyes might be adjusting a little better, or maybe the moon was behind a cloud before, because he can see Cas’s upright shoulders against the backdrop, his mussed hair.

                “Cas,” he says, because he thinks Cas has been waiting patiently for some kind of explanation, “I couldn’t be here before, but I’m here now, if you want me to be. As much as I can, for as long as it takes.”

                “Before?” Cas echoes. “I didn’t expect you before, Dean. I didn’t know you yet.”

                Dean swallows. “I wish I was, though. I wish you never had to spend any of those days alone.” This time, he’s the one who lets his hand creep over, from his sleeping bag to Cas’s, until he finds Cas’s knee.

                “By choice,” Cas reminds him, but his voice is close and warm. “I never wanted to share this with anyone until you.”

                And Dean doesn’t think he will ever know why—because he remembers being a loud-mouthed asshole that day they met, not saying anything that should incline anyone to share anything with him, really, but Cas’s reasons are his own. Dean doesn’t think Cas is wrong about many things, not when they involve the redwood.

                Dean’s hand moves up from Cas’s knee, and find the shape of him in the darkness, grounding himself in the give of Cas’s belly, the dip and curve of his collarbone, the scruff of his beard against his palm.

                Cas is breathing quickly, quietly, and the platform creaks as he leans forward in the dark, finding Dean’s shoulders in the darkness, pulling him in. Everything seems quiet, still, as Cas’s lips fumble over Dean’s chin, his beard scraping at Dean’s skin as he lets out a sigh, his lips finding Dean’s. Warm and wet, their lips meeting and separating with a whisper of sound, Dean’s tongue teasing into Cas’s parted mouth.

                The sleeping bag beneath Dean rustles as Cas moves closer, his knees shifting to either side of Dean’s hips, groaning at the way Dean makes room for him, settling their bodies together. Dean grows bolder, tangling his fingers into Cas’s hair, cupping his face closer, closer, until there’s nothing but heat and flesh and Cas’s body rolling against his, slow, faster.

                “Wait,” Dean says, drawing his head back a fraction. “Wait, wait, I have—”

                And he’s scrabbling, blind, into his duffel bag, feeling over hard, unfamiliar shapes until he finds what he wants, those things he’s grabbed for many times before, in the dark. He presses them into Cas’s hand—it takes Cas a moment longer, maybe, to figure out what they are, but when he does he abruptly stands up, drawing off his shirt in one easy motion, and Dean stands up too, Cas’s hands sliding up under his hem to do the same.

                “Fuck, Cas,” he whispers against Cas’s shoulder, feeling the muscle tense and shift as Cas undoes Dean’s belt and jeans without drawing away.

                “Jesus,” he marvels, when he’s on his hands and knees on the sleeping bag, because he’s conscious of the hoot of an owl somewhere close by, leaves shifting overhead, and he feels his skin on his back start to prickle with cold before Cas layers himself over it, warm as blanket.

                And then—“God, Dear God,” and many other things besides, as Cas runs his hands all over him, gently, petting over the curve of his hip; as he presses a cold, lube-slicked finger into him, panting into the back of Dean’s neck as he does; as he slides his hand around Dean, slowly jacking him off. That’s even before he presses one hand to Dean’s belly, to hold him up, as he slides into Dean sweet as anything, and whispers Dean’s name into his shoulder over and over, like he could tattoo it there, with his broken voice and his hot breath and the scratch of his beard. That’s all Dean’s aware of, for some timeless stretch while Cas rocks into him and into him, until Dean comes with a shout that turns into a murmur, until Cas mouths a grateful kiss into the sweaty dip of his neck.

**

                In the morning, Dean wakes to find himself pressed up against Cas, sharing one sleeping bag, warm as a furnace.

                When Cas opens his eyes, his face goes a little funny, and he touches Dean’s cheek softly.

                “Dean,” he says, and Dean flattens him a bit, as he rolls over to give Cas a morning kiss. Cas’s fingers are light on Dean’s cheek where the skin is sensitive, smarting a little.

                Cas shares a granola bar with him, sitting naked but for a pair of boxers on the side of the platform, and they linger for longer than necessary until Dean finally has to leave for work. He helps Dean into the harness and then steps closer, turning his head into  Dean’s shoulder with a sigh before he draws away.

                “I’ll see you soon,” he says, and even though his voice is even, Dean sees his smile falter as Dean descends out of sight.

                Once on the ground, he finds Uri sleeping with a pillow pressed over his ears, and Balth is sitting up waiting for him.

                “Nice pash rash,” he says, and Dean’s hand jumps to his jaw. “Now, I have to say I was a _little_ put out by being kept up half the night, but _then_ I finally realized you were just trying to dictate a letter to me!”

                To Dean’s horror, Balth draws out a piece of paper from beneath his pillow, and makes a show of smoothing it flat.

                “Dear God,” Balth reads out. Dean lets out a moan of horror and Balth nods, as if in agreement. “Yes, I was a bit surprised by your proposed recipient as well, but I digress. Dear God, fuck, God yeah, that’s, do that again, oh, yes, like that, Cas, Cas, God, Cas, so good, yes, so full, Cas, shit, God, honey, oh, please, Cas, _oh_.” He looks up at Dean with an arched eyebrow. “Did you want that signed _sincerely, Dean_? You weren’t clear on that point.”

                Dean pretty sure he’s never been so red in his life, as he marches off to his car with Balth rolling in laughter behind him. 

**

                Sam’s the one who tells him, a few weeks later. He calls on Dean’s lunch break.

                “It’s over,” he says, happily. “Well, good as, anyway. PP knew they were gonna lose the suit so it’s moved into negotiations. Ellen will drop her case if Pacific Power agrees to protect the redwood and all the land surrounding it within a two mile radius.”

                “When?” Dean says, dumbfounded. “When will they be done?”

                “They’re probably finalizing everything now,” Sam says. “Tonight might be Novak’s last night in the tree.”

                Dean drives straight from work, as he’s had a habit of doing, to the protest site. Hester’s there, as she normally is, Uri, Anna, many others besides. He’s surprised to see that Hester is on her cell phone, instead of leading a lecture on environmental awareness.

                “—And tell Phil not to even entertain the idea of a merger unless their books are as black as they say they are,” she’s saying. “Keep me updated.”

                She ends the call and turns to smile at Dean. “Hey! Did you hear the good news?”

                “Yeah,” Dean says slowly. Hester must see the confused look on her face because she pats his arm.

                “Dean, believe it or not, I can be passionate about a cause and still have a lucrative, fulfilling career,” she says. “Garrison Tech? Ever heard of it? I’m their CFO.”

                “But—” Dean says. He at least can admit that he no longer thinks of all the people who support Cas from the ground as simply smelly hippies. He’s a little ashamed that still, until this moment, he never entertained the idea that these people might still have lives beyond what he saw.

                “I’m sure he wants to see you,” Hester says, and walks with Dean back to the redwood, telling him stories as he goes.

                When Dean gets drawn up, he’s already bursting with news.

                “So Uri used to be a kickass rugby player in the UK, who knew? Hester’s some bigwig at a Fortune 500 company, and Hannah—”

                He stops. Cas is leaning against the trunk of the redwood, pale and miserable, and he doesn’t seem to be particularly thrilled about Dean’s gossip.

                “Cas, what’s wrong?”

                “Nothing,” he says. He sits heavily. “Nothing’s wrong. Who else, what were you saying?”

                Dean, after a moment of uncertainty, comes to sit beside him, planting a kiss into his beard. Cas sighs but doesn’t turn to him.

                “It doesn’t matter,” Dean says. “Why do you seem so upset? Didn’t you hear the news?”

                “ _Of course_ I heard the news,” Cas says, standing up and moving away from him. “Hester sent up a note—all the big news stations are going to be here tomorrow, watching me finally come down after three years. I’ll probably be all over the six o clock news.”

                “Okay,” Dean says. “All right. Tell me what I’m missing.”

                Cas shakes his head. “So they’re expecting some larger-than-life inspiration. They’re expecting speeches and, and, someone successful, someone who matters. And everyone down there, they’ve done so  much, they’ve given me much—and they’re so. They’re so much _more_.”

                Cas turns away, crossing his arms. “I’m not a leader, or anyone important,” he says softly. “I’m gonna disappoint all of them. I don’t have a job—I don’t have a home anymore, since I don’t have a job, I don’t have any family or friends worth mentioning—I’m a loser, okay? And now I’ll go down there, and have a thoroughly humiliating five minutes of fame, and everyone else can go back to their nice lives and I—I won’t even have a place to sleep, anymore—it was so much easier when I didn’t have to do anything but disappear up here—”

                Cas presses his fingers to his eyes, breath hitching before he controls it, and Dean stumbles up.  

                “Cas,” he says, trying to draw his hands away. “Cas, look at me, come on. It’s not like that. I can’t believe you’d think that.”

                “Which part?” Cas snaps, and finally lets Dean pull his hands away.

                “All of it,” Dean says. “Cas, the people down there, they love you—”

                “They don’t even know me.”

                “And they love you anyway. You’ve heard—Angel Wings. They can’t wait to meet you.”

                Cas shrugs, like he’s not listening. “I thought I had at least a few more years,” he says. “I wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t upset, either.”

                Dean sits down on the edge of the platform, waiting until Cas comes to sit next to him. “So, first of all,” Dean says lowly, after a moment, “You’ve done something none of them could ever have done. _None_. And they all know it.”

                “Second of all,” he says, glancing around, “You should know that I’ve been looking into other jobs, once my contract’s up. San Diego State, they’re looking to put together a team with plenty of construction experience, they want to try test-building solar-powered roads. And that won’t be for at least another year and a half, and you know, I’m not saying it’s gonna save the world, but it’s something, isn’t it?”

                “Of course,” Cas says. “That sounds great, Dean.”

                “Well,” Dean says fiercely, “Why do you think I’m even doing that in the first place? A job’s a job, either way. I had no particular reason to leave mine.  It’s because of _you_ , Cas, because I wanted to try to be as big as you are.”

                Cas is goggling at him a little, and Dean takes his hand and crushes it between two of his, almost angrily. “And what do you mean you have no place to go, you fucking dummy? You have me, as much as you want, for as long as you want. I thought you knew that.”

                Cas, sitting beside him, looks off into the green canopy overhead, the one he can’t imagine not waking up to every morning. He puts his other hand on top of one of Dean’s, and is silent, but he’s holding on so tight, he doesn’t have to say a word for Dean to know.

**

                Cas wanted to spend his last night in the redwood alone.

                Dean comes early the next morning, Sam and Jess and Ellen in tow, to find CNN and ABC and a herd of other news vans, clustered around the base of the tree. The air is thick with expectation, chatter, and he finds Hester and the rest of the supporters in a clump, carrying celebratory banners, a few off to the side talking to reporters.

                Someone’s carrying a newspaper, the headline says, _PP’S DEFENSE HOLDS NO WATER_ and then, in smaller type, _PP RELIEVES ITSELF OF COSTLY VENTURE_.

 _“_ Come on,” Dean says loudly. “I can’t be the only person who’s noticing this. It’s a bathroom joke, does no one get it?” Jess elbows him quiet.

                “How was he last night?” Hester asks, when Dean sidles up besides her.

                “Nervous,” Dean says. Now he’s feeling nervous, too.

                First, Cas sends his buckets down, the both of them, loaded down with food and books and toiletries—people step forward to help unload them and, once light, he brings them up and refills them until there’s nothing left to send down.

                The ropes holding the buckets slither down, cut from the platform above.

                Then the crowd grows silent as, far above, Cas begins his first and only descent.

                He doesn’t look down, or around. Dean watches as Cas pauses about halfway down the tree—by this time, everyone’s caught sight of him, has started cheering—watches as Cas takes a breath, and lets out the line again. Twenty feet above. Ten. Hands reaching up to grab him, to steady him as he touches the ground.

                Cas looks wary, uncomfortable, as he stares about into the jostle of congratulating people, slapping his back,  unclipping  his harness. Dean wishes he was closer, isn’t sure Cas can see him, but then Hester’s there, taking Cas’s arm.

                “Hey, you,” she says. She pulls him into a hug; Cas collapses into her. “Angel Wings, it’s about time we met.”

                “You can call me Cas,” he says faintly, but with a shadow of the smile that Dean loves so much.

                Then there’s the flash of cameras, and microphones bristling in a ring around Cas and Hester, and Cas is able to answer the question, “How does it feel to be back on solid ground?” with a deadpan, “solid,” that has the giddy crowd laughing.

                Hester helps, fielding questions when she can, and makes a sign off camera, _wrap it up_ , after only a few minutes.

                “How were you able to do it, for three years?”

                “I had my friends,” Cas says, looking at Hester and the others in the crowd, who were smiling at him in something like recognition. Dean’s surprised to see that Cas’s eyes are wet. “I can’t thank them enough. I had Ellen Harvelle, the lawyer who fought our case for us.” Cas’s eyes find Dean’s over the reporters’ heads. “I had Dean,” he says slowly, like it’s a revelation. “I had Dean Winchester.”

                And at that Sam claps him hard on the back, and Dean pushes his way through the crowd so that he can finally wrap Cas’s hand in his, and take him away.

**

                Cas sinks into the passenger seat like it’s a featherbed. The drive home, Dean keeps the radio at a low rumble, and Cas looks and looks at the bulk of Mount Shasta, the golden curves of the highway, the grassy verges flashing by the side of the car. He rolls down his window and sticks his head and arm out, closing his eyes against the wind, all the way home.

                At Dean’s apartment, Dean shows him the bathroom, and Cas pushes down his clothes without any hesitance and steps into the shower, groaning under his breath as the hot water comes down over him. Dean makes up the bed for them, hearing Cas make happy noises under the spray. He flips channels on the TV while Cas fumbles with a razor, tapping it against the sink, until Cas emerges with a clean-shaven jaw, and a bit of toilet paper on his chin where he nicked himself, and a shy expression.

                And, even though it’s barely the afternoon, they end up going to bed together. Cas stretches luxuriously on the mattress, burrowing his wet hair into the pillow, before turning and curling himself tight into Dean’s back, smiling into Dean’s shoulder.

                Here are some of the things that happen next. Dean and Cas sleep through the day, and then through the night, and wake up the next morning with flushed cheeks and wandering hands. Dean will compliment Cas’s peach fuzz, he’ll work his way down, finding other things to compliment as well, until Cas has a pillow shoved beneath the small of his back, and his legs folded up to his chest, and Dean’s got Cas’s feet in the air, hands curled around the knobs of his ankles, as he learns how many ways Cas might say his name.

                Dean and Cas move to a tiny house, a year or so later, when Dean has his new job lined up and Cas is close enough to the airport that he can fly out when so needed—to accept awards, to raise awareness, and he always practices his speeches on Dean, first, nervously holding his note cards in the living room while Dean sits in nothing but his underwear, so Cas doesn’t have to use any imagination when getting over his stage fright.

                Dean and Cas help build a tree house for Sam and Jess’s kids, when they’re old enough, in their backyard, in a maple that’s only twenty feet high or so. Cas walks lightly along the limbs as Dean passes the boards up, one by one. Cas tells them how once he had lived in a redwood that had been so big, four men could not link arms around it. So tall, Uncle Dean had to wear a harness and be lugged one hundred feet up just to go on a date with him. And then Cas might look a little nostalgic, and be a little quiet, even though the family knows that the redwood still thrives, protected land and all, somewhere in a forest near Mount Shasta.

                But before all of that, before moving, before speeches, before Cas builds tree houses and tells stories, there is that first long sleep in Dean’s bed, and here is what happens. Cas wakes up, more rested than he’s felt in years, to find Dean leaning on one elbow, smiling at him. Leaning down to kiss him back into the pillow.

                And that’s when Cas freezes for a moment, looking up into Dean’s face, before his face breaks out into a wide smile.    

                “What?” Dean says, because Cas looks like he just found something important. “What do you see?”

                “Green,” Cas says, passing a gentle finger softly, so softly, over Dean’s eyelashes. “I see green.”

**

               

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, I did all of my fandom writing in 2014 and had to publish one more before the year's up.  
> more to come--maeleene is certainly aware of that, many apologies!  
> sorry for comments i have not yet replied to--for some reason i keep on getting overtaken with ads every time i'm on this site, and i'm not sure how to fix it, and i'm not really sure what to do about it.  
> i'm not working as much now, so i hope to update in the next week or so.  
> thanks so much to all!
> 
> paperclothesline.tumblr.com


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